


The Right Kind of Touch

by DinosaurTheology



Series: The Scholar and the Seeker [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, First Time, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Inexperience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:57:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Seeker and her Knight-Enchanter are entwined as close as two bodies and souls may be, but some couples seem to have something more. Can she find what is missing?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Kind of Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Dragon Age is not mine but I'm sure glad to be playing through it again. This was a fun way to get back to work after life got in my way a little bit!

Cassandra first starts thinking about it when she overhears a conversation between Thram and Helaine, in the Herald's rest. She sits at a low booth, near Bull and Krem's usual haunt--they are out training, or perhaps just beating each other senseless for the sheer joy of it--waiting for Flissa to hustle out from behind the bar with a steaming platter of Nevarran cabbage and thinly sliced lamb spiced with caraway seed she has specially requested that Seggrit and Cabot learn to make. They have been, thus far, pleased to comply--especially Seggrit, eager as a puppy to curry possible favor with the famous Inquisitor Trevelyan's bed partner. It has worked out well for her, a little taste of a home almost forgotten through years of travel that she enjoys now and again on cold mornings when she awakens beside him and her joints and scars remind her that she's lived a hard nearly forty years.

Although they are both elves, on the surface these two women cannot seem different enough. Thram is slight, with the dark skin common to those Seheronese elves known as Fog Warriors. She bleaches her cropped hair with lime and, in battle, cakes her skin with ghost paint and the swirling, scarlet images of the dracolisks, gurguts and wyverns that haunt Sehereon's humid, sticky swamps and jungles. Helaine is shorter and a little stout, with honey colored eyes softer than her barking voice and dark hair pulled into the severest of buns. She tends toward tenacious study and debate with Vivienne and Mischa over the role of healing magic in a knight-enchanter's tool-kit, Thram enjoys head butting contests with the Iron Bull. In spite of these differences, maybe even because of them in some ways as opposites call to one another, the two of them are fast friends.

Over in their booth, Helaine picks at a plate of pale beans, mushrooms and creamy semolina--she, Vivienne and Mischa, for all that they disagree over the role of healing in their craft, find that a vegetarian diet enhances the sharpness of their spirit blades, the hardiness of their barriers. Thram, by contrast, holds a joint of barely warm meat aloft and gnaws it hungrily. Another difference between the women. After a moment of noisy chewing, she lays it on the plate in front of her, wipes blood from the corners of her mouth, and offers her friend a red grin. "So, Helaine, you'll not be the first woman to spill your guts to me... let me know what he's like in bed."

She blushes prettily. "I can't tell you that, Thram. It's... personal." She looks confused, so Helaine goes on. "I know that the People of the Fog don't consider privacy important, at least not quite like we do in the South, but... he would be upset, if I were to tell everyone. And I would, too. It would be like if I asked your real name."

She frowns. "Thram is my real name."

"Really?" Helaine smiles; this is well trod ground.

She shrugs. "In my tongue it means 'breaker' or 'reaver.' That is what I am, and so that is what folks call me and I call myself."

"I mean the name that your mother gave you--that one."

"Oh. Peace then, vasha." Interesting... this must be the word for "friend" in Seheron's isolated dialect of Elvhen. It is similar to the way that elven slaves in the north of Tevinter speak, and slang used by elves under the Qun. Cassandra files this away to the back of her mind, a practice she learned well as a Seeker, in case it ever proves to be of any use. "Perhaps if I tell you how I ride Korse Goren til his rod can take no more, and then have him kneel behind me then you will feel comfortable in telling me what kind of fuckery it is that you and Cullen get up to."

There is a short lull in the conversation when Cassandra's food arrives. She misses nothing, but thanks Flissa, pays her bill and a little extra, digs in. It's good--not what a Nevarran might have cooked, but worth eating nonetheless after a hard morning on the training ground.

Helaine's blush deepens, painting a pale face scarlet from brow to throat. So... Thram is involved with Korse Goren, the Avvar champion known as "Wyvern Thirster," at least when he is in Skyhold and on a break from the reaving he does as along with Tamar, another of the Inquisition's few reavers. She'd have thought Tamar and Korse to be a more obvious choice for coupling, as both are human and the Avvar uncomfortable with those outside their system of tribes, but it seems that Thram's ferocity and ravenous taste for blood has overcome even the Frostback's legendary xenophobia. It is not uninteresting, but largely irrelevant--unless Korse and Tamar are an item, on the side, and it leads to violence when Thram finds out. Cassandra knows little of reavers, save that those in the Pentaghast line were violently unstable men and women known for turning in unprovoked rage on even their own parents, siblings and children. She reminds herself to let Threnn, the leader of Skyhold's small community guard, and Blackwall, the only man she can imagine surviving in then middle of a three way reaver lovers' quarrel, to keep an eye on the situation when all three of the volatile warriors in Skyhold.

That Helaine and Cullen are bed partners is... surprising, to say the least. Cassandra finds herself oddly unable to imagine Cullen as a sexual being. She knows that he carried a torch for the fallen mage Stefanja Amell, and was known in Kirkwall for casting cow eyes at her cousin Bethany Hawke, but would have imagined that lyrium withdrawal, consistent Chantry browbeating in his youth and the cruel attentions of a desire demon would have scoured the lover from his soul. It is... good, she decides, if he and this quiet, steadfast knight-enchantress have found solace in each other's arms, like the kind of book that Varric should be writing instead of those dreadfully vulgar "Hard in Hightown" novels. 

Templar and knight-enchantress... Cassandra finds herself smiling. It is so similar, in a way, to Seeker and knight-enchanter. The two pair well with each other, perhaps, like some wines do with certain dishes? She has known only one other man in her life, so she doesn't consider herself well versed in the intricacies of romance. She has noticed that, for all their supposed hatred of one another, that mages and members of the Order find themselves in each other's beds with alarming regularity--even discounting, of course, the disgusting abuse that she and all Seekers have investigated at some point in their career. Is it simple proximity, or something in the training and discipline that both the Circle and Chantry provide to produce a similar outlook on life? The question bears careful consideration. She will put it to Mischa, tonight, when they lie in each others arms and wait for sleep to creep up on them.

"So," Thram says, "are you going to tell me, vash, or shall I beat it out of you?" She's grinning; the reaver's propensity towards violence is, apparently, and old joke between friends.

"If you must know, then I shall tell you." Helaine seems flustered. Is it because of Thram's teasing, or that Cullen will be away for some month in the Exalted Plains on business with Josephine? Blackwall is agitated because she will be away, has been distracted at their morning practice of the chevalier's art. They are barely a fortnight engaged, breaching the surface of planning a proper wedding for one of Antiva's merchant princesses, and now will be parted. It is a pity.

Helaine heaves a high, pushes her plate aside. "He is wonderful. I have never had the time to pursue love, before. My studies and training ate the day--as his always had, too. We have explored slowly, but discovered much. There are things he does with his mouth and fingers..." A wide, silly grin breaks across her face. The stern, often forbidding knight-enchantress looks a clod-kicking Alienage girl of fifteen. "Thram, beloved, he makes me feel like my head is about to pop off! Maker's breath, if those are the skills that they teach them in the Chantry, no wonder the Templars have always had a power over us!" She chortles, pleased with what passes for a joke from her.

Thram laughs too and drains her tankard. It is meade, vilely sweet stuff that Cassandra cannot stand but Cabot is wise to keep on tap for the Inquisition's numerous Avvar agents and their warbands. "I will not say that it's how you tell that you're in love, vasha, because what you describe is purely physical... but by the spirits, when you find a man who can make you feel that way, hang on to him." She cradled Helaine's cheek softly in one palm. "The way he makes you blush and stammer, though, speaks volumes to me about love."

"Perhaps, perhaps." She fidgets. "I hope that he is safe at Fort Revasan. Madame de Fer tells me that it is hell, out there."

"What do Templars like your Cullen train as they do for, if not facing hell and all its companies? Ara bamasta, vasha. He will be fine."

Another interesting snatch of how the Fog Warriors spoke... It sounded to Cassandra's ears something like "aneth ara," one of the few phrases in Elvhen that she knew to mean that all was safe or well, and she'd echoedthe sentiment afterwards. Most curious. Their tongue lay tantalizing close to Elvhen, then, though spiced by Tevene and even more heavily by Qunlat, just as she'd suspected. It was the sort of information that could be useful, but not in her clumsy hands, well suited for gripping a sword but not this delicate work. Perhaps Mischa could make something of it, or Varric? Solas, certainly. Cassandra hesitated to bring him things, from time to time, though. He had never proven duplicitous but... she was sure that secrets lurked in the depths of his bald head.

Tchah. Whose memory was not spined by a few dragon's teeth? To be suspicious of him--because he was an elf not of the Alienage or Dales, a mage neither of the Circles nor Dalish Keepers--seemed an unworthy reaction to the man who'd first taught Mischa how to open and close the rifts. She wipes her mouth, rises with enough force to draw glances from Helaine, Thram and Maryden Halewell, stalks out of the Herald's Rest to find Leliana. If my experience with men is limited, Cassandra reasons, then Leliana's with men and women shall prove enough to teach me all that I wish to know and then some besides.

When she finds her friend in the rookery office and explains this, it earns her the laughter which has left the bard nicknamed Grace Cristal where she is not known as Rossignol. Varric's nickname for her--Red--suits Cassandra's fancy much better. Short, pointed, descriptive. An excessively active imagination, the Seeker knows, is not a charge that will ever be laid at her feet. Leliana sits quiet for a moment, coaxing high, sharp notes from her mandolina's slender neck, and scratching notes on the lyric pad in front of her.

After what seems an eternity, she speaks. "I'm working on a song that fits your line of questioning, belle-amie."

Cassandra's brows knit together. Leliana waits a long moment, content to work silently until asked what she's about. Damn the woman's games. She does ask, though. "What do you mean?"

"It is a madrigal, in sprightly majors, about the... tension that Alistair and Morrigan shared on our long journey together. They seemed to hate each other, but I am convinced it had as much to do with attraction misplaced as true enmity." Cassandra nods, hopes she will go on, aware yet that Leliana thinks almost all hatred is attraction misplaced. It is, possibly, due to her complicated history with Marjolaine. The very thought of taking another woman as a lover, with all the twists and winding cul-de-sacs of the soul, terrifies her. It is good that she will never face such a situation, Cassandra observes, finds it more disturbing than Red Templars.

At the end of another pause, filled with scribbling, scowling at what she'd scribbled, smudging and scribbling again, Leliana continues. "Morrigan, you see, was raised in the Korcari Wilds by Flemeth--a powerful sorceress but total madwoman. The only men Morrigan encountered at an early age were Chasind who nigh worshipped her foster mother and foolhardy Templars seeking to destroy them. Men, therefore, were either subservient creatures to be exploited or enemies to outwit. Alistair, refusing to fit neatly into either category, left her confused and upset."

"What of your Ravin?"

Storm clouds cross Nightingale's perfect face. "He transcended categories, and thus drew the witch like a candle's flame. And thus drew me, as well, to my everlasting joy and sorrow."

Cassandra lets it lie. "And Alistair? You said both their upbringings played a part in this."

"Ah, yes," Leliana says. "Well, you were raised yourself partly by the Chantry, and share a bed with one who was raised by the Circle. You know well how far their teachings can go to undo what nature has spent ages in perfecting."

"Indeed." It has only been recently, after all, that Mischa has been willing to bathe with her or lie with her fully unclad. The Ostwick Circle and its First Enchanter are northern in orientation, the Senior Enchanters being either his old friends or willing to ape his customs. The Templars, also, are a mixture of Nevarran and Antivan, many trained by the famous Claire-Lune de Olivet and Richard Connleigh. This makes them all conservative and provincial by nature. A dear, shy boy like the middle Trevelyan child would have happily folded in upon himself there, burying the man in a scholar's robes and scrolls. 

One element of the theory bothers her. "If Morrigan's unconventional upbringing made it difficult for her to show affection, then why does Declan Hawke not suffer from the same affliction?"

"Ah, but he does."

Cassandra actually laughs. She has not for days; it feels good, though foreign in her throat. "Bullshit. He and Merrill are more sickening than treacle."

"You forget, belle-amie, that I knew the Hawkes in Lothering, when they were young. Declan felt huge and out of place in the town--the grace he shows as a ranger was nowhere present when he shambled in, traded furs or meat, and faded back into the Wilds. It would have never occurred to him to court a village girl."

"You mean..."

Leliana nods. "Precisely. In his orientation and worldview, Declan is far more Dalish than he is of Kirkwall or Ferelden. He has spoken the language fluently since he was a boy, and I have it on good authority that he and Merrill use it nearly exlusively when they are alone. Wild places call to him, as they would an elf, because he was raised much like one. Sera, conversely, is a human in her heart because a human childhood scoured the elvhen out of her." She chuckles. "That is why they are both getting a verse, although I do not know if Sera belongs in that of Declan and Merrill or one of her own. She is a... challenge, artistically."

"More than artistically," Cassandra says. "Our kitchen staff have to keep all the pastries under lock and key--and for her last birthday Varric and Three-Eyes gave her tools fine enough to spring the locks." This is more to say something, to avoid another silence, than anything else. Cassandra's thoughts tumble in her head, rattling against one another and a skull she considers thicker than most helmets. Given time, they might come to rest in an uncomfortable place.

"I see you understand," Leliana says. "Your face sings an elegy. I do not, though. I cannot help you, sweetling, if you will not confide in me. How long has it been, twelve years, fifteen?"

"Twenty-one." Leliana knows this, uses the repetion to manuever Cassandra into revealing plainly in plain Trade what has been bothering her. There is no deadlier enemy than Nightingale, nor finer friend.

"Then you know that I am about this for your own good, darling. Now tell me... the fullness of what is bothering you, my love."

"I have not known many men, as you are aware."

"Only two, unless you have been holding back on me--and I know a dear like you would never do that," Leliana says. Drawling humor crawls across her lips and voice.

"Only two--Mischa and Regalyan. And with each of them I have been happy, have felt intense joy at our coupling and loved the feeling of each of them within me but..." She curls her fingers into fingers, straightens them. "I have not experienced the violent, soul shaking pleasure that Helaine described to Thram. Leliana, you who have forgotten more about the ways of men and women than I am likely to ever know, is there something wrong with me? Am I..." She twists her fingers. "Am I doing it wrong? Does my failure leave Mischa less pleased as well? I..."

Leliana raises her hand to her mouth, stifles laughter. "Precious Cassandra... let me address your last problem first. Does Mischa spend his seed with you?"

She flushes the color of Leliana's drapes. "Yes, on my stomach... inside me, if I ask him." The crimson crawls from her collar to the braid wrapped around her head. "We have tried to avoid a child, right now, but... sometimes it satisfies a need, deep inside me."

"Deep inside." Leliana chuckles. "Yes, but I can imagine." She considers a moment. "You have experienced jouissance, my dear, or the joy of being with one you love, but not a true climax, what we bards refer to as 'la petite morte.'"

Cassandra's Orlesian is good enough for this to raise her eyebrow. "The little death, Leliana?"

"We are a rather dramatic people, no? But I am telling you the truth, as I always struggle to. That is the feeling that you describe, what you seek. You will know it when you find it."

"And how," Cassandra says, "would I go about that?"

Leliana shrugs. "Every woman is different. Take your time with Mischa, tonight... explore his body and let him explore yours. I know that you love him inside you and he loves to be there, but slow yourselves. Let your kisses blossom, crawl and seek. Allow your fingers to find purchase and take root where they will. The right kind of touch will do what needs doing... that's an old saying I heard from Lady Cecelie, when she explained womanly wiles to me." A giggle. "Orlesians seem to have put much thought into these matters, no?"

"A short poem about flowers and a story from your girlhood?" It is Cassandra's turn to laugh. "You have given much advice, but I fear I am ill suited to taking it!"

"Que sera, sera, bouchinette. Let things evolve as I suggest and see if you are not a different woman tomorrow morning." The wicked smile returns. "One more like your beloved Knight-Captain, perhaps. Regardless you must tell me how things turn out."

Cassandra's disgusted grunt, famous throughout Skyhold, rears its head. "Will you never end your teasing me with that? Varric is lucky that I have not plucked each hair from his chest for telling..."

"Look at it as the payment I exact for all the wonderful advice I give," Leliana says. "A little teasing... it comes cheaply, I would say, wouldn't you?"

"I would rather hand over golden pentas by the sackful, to be truthful."

"And those, to me, have no value. Your blushes, on the other hand, are priceless." She is rewarded with another one. Cassandra flees, much burdened with how she will proceed this night, buoyed on a wave of Leliana's silver laughter. She returns to her songwriting, satisfied that a bard's work, even if never done, can at least be a great deal of fun.

The day's remaining business crawls at the pace of a dying snail. Cassandra finds herself more agitated and confused than she has been since the first time she lay with Mischa, beneath their tree in the meadow near Skyhold, after a fine meal and the reading of poetry burning enough to scald souls and fingertips alike. He props on an elbow reading a short monograph, by one Madame Vivienne de Fer, about the upkeep of barriers being a knight-enchanter's primary responsibility towards his squad. He frowns. It coaxes the line on his brow, right between his amber eyes, that she believes will quicken her heart until the Maker calls her home. He has not noticed her, scratches in the margins. The rebuttal will be along the lines of ones penned by Helaine and in years past his mentor, Enchanter Wilyam, that a knight-enchanter must heal and otherwise bolster the spirits of his squad inside the barrier, too, else he is little more than an over-educated mantlet. This disagreement is likely why Vivienne, redoubtable though she can be in combat, is relegated mostly to diplomatic missions where frail flesh will not have to rely on her in a moment of violence.

Cassandra can understand her point, though. Vivienne has fought in the past only with Templars, heavily armed and armored, against rogue apostates and the thugs they might hire for protection. Dedicated attacks, like those they suffer against the the Red Templars, are unlikely in those situations and the Templars she has worked with possess their own potent defense against dark magic. Mischa, by contrast, believes that the knight-enchanter plays an important role in many combined arms operations, fighting on the front lines if needed and supporting the champion and common man-at-arms alike. She suspects it is because no soldiers of the Inquisition is expendable to him. He longs to save everyone and she loves him for it.

It can wait until tomorrow morning, though. If he is not put to bed at a reasonable hour Mischa will work all night and, after all, visiting dignitaries do not wish to see a Herald of Andraste with heavy, purple bags under eyes with a dreamy, far off look in them. She strips off her leggings and blouse, revealing nearly six feet of pale, lithely muscled flesh. Undergarments seem as ridiculous to her as clothing that you wore specially for your own bed, where the only person apt to see you was one who had already seen you naked.

This gets his attention. She knew it would. His bright eyes gape wide. "Wow..."

She slips into bed beside him, kisses his lips gently. "You see me every night, my love. Surely nothing has changed."

He laughs, mouth still close enough to hers for her to feel the vibration. "I'm glad it hasn't; I haven't studied nearly enough, yet, to get tired of it. I don't think I ever could."

"It serves well enough, I suppose, as far as bodies go." He wraps his arms around her waist. She nestles against him. This is... difficult to approach. She draws a deep breath, and strength from his warm body close to hers. He olive skinned like Dorian--the Trevelyans, she remembers idly at the back of her mind, are Tevinter in origin like so many of the noble houses in the Free Marches and Antiva, a link in the blood between their wayward Altus, Mischa and Lady Josie written in the shapes of their eyes, noses and lips, along with dark curls skin that gleams warm brown in the summer sun. His chest is hairy, though the mat there is not as thick as that on Blackwall or Varric. 

She lets her fingers play in it. "I... learned something today. About something called 'la petite morte.'"

"You've been talking to Leliana, I see. What song has our Nightingale sung that's got you so pensive?" He wraps his hand over hers, turns it, presses his lips softly against her palm.

"I... want to experience it. I have not. Not with you, nor ever before." She blushes, struggles to continue, turns bright, pleading hazel eyes on him. "Others have this thing between them that we do not; I do not want there to be any completeness lacking in us." Ugh... the warrior at the back of her brain calls out against this foolishness. Not only becoming calf eyed over some romantic silliness, but doing it so badly that it sounds like a transaction between horse traders? She will be lucky if he does not laugh at her, send her from the room.

He surprises her--not that her conscious mind expected cruelty, only disappointment--by quoting. "My body opens, filled and blessed, my spirit there--not merely housed in flesh but brought to life."

A smile. "You remember..."

"How could I forget the most important day of my life?"

The smile broadens, grows silly, must look like a gurgut bearing down on some poor snoufleur in the Black Marshes. "The dream of flesh on burning flesh, touched not by earthly fires but the Maker's breath. Andraste arches in the throes of her husband's glory; the Magisters cannot hope to touch what He has already set His seal upon."

"Another from the Carmenum? I don't recognize it."

"One of my own. I know it's not much..."

"Not much?" He laughs. "You blasphemous little temptress..."

"I don't think anyone has called me little since Anthony died. Temptress, only you. Blasphemous?" She sighs. "I believe history will have to decide that one." She settles against him, mood suddenly pensive, lets his heart drum against her.

It takes a long, silent moment of lying, flesh entwined, to decide. "I want to try with you, tonight. To experience what I heard about today. C-can we?" It's ridiculous, she knows. A woman who can boil the lyrium in an archmage's blood, who's withstood a giant's charge, stammering like a virgin village girl of fifteen. No matter. 

He nods. They move with each other, letting kisses blossom. The sweltering blooms travel, down throats, across shoulders, over breasts, across the scar from a dragon claw that winds around her ribcage. His tongue flickers down her stomach, flattening the soft, fine hairs below her navel. Her fingers dig into his dark curls. She clings to him in abandon, he presses forward seeking her center. 

When he enters her, she is more than ready. Her back arches, welcoming him. They dance in the coverlets, explore and learn much of each other. Love is a long, slow progression, the journey more important than any destination could be. In spite of it all, what she feels are legendary efforts, she does not find the little death during that leisurely night, but discovers many pleasures besides.

Later, lying curled against his side, she wonders if she'll ever feel that enormous, rushing power that she overheard Helaine talking about, that Leliana explained to her. Perhaps, she thinks while listening to him snore softly agaist the top of her head, it doesn't matter, not really. It is only one thing, a small thing, stacked against all that they do have. The right kind of touch... Perhaps that is any touch, between the right man and woman. Could that be what Leliana meant?

No, Cassandra reasons... her old friend is brilliant--especially regarding the ways people express their love for each other--but that is, just maybe, giving even her too much credit. It doesn't really matter, though, she realizes while crawling towards sleep. She has worked this out for herself and, regardless anything else, it has proven true. In all the world they have each other's touch, she and the man beside her who fidgets and mumbles in his sleep. That seems like the only one she needs.


End file.
